"I have been putting the finished touches on my TIES 2012 Education Technology Conference workshop for next week called “My students all have iPads – now what?” The workshop is going to be a lot of fun with lots of examples of kids doing amazing things with iPads.

Combine a makerspace, science fair and a coding bootcamp and you have South Fayette School District, a computational carnival for 3,200 students south of Pittsburgh.

With four schools on one suburban campus, South Fayette is the best example of K-12 integrated computational thinking we’ve seen. Yes, kids are learning to code but more importantly, they are learning to attack complex problems, analyze data, and sprint in teams to public products.

According to an Oxford University analysis, close to half of all jobs will be taken over by robots in the next 25 years. No wonder the press is full of handwringing about how workers will adjust and the best way to prepare the next generation for this A.I.-filled future.

But not everyone is alarmed about the prospect of radical change in the labor market. After all, this has happened before (for instance, when mechanization replaced the vast majority of farmers) and it turned out OK. Plus, a lot of today's jobs are soul-crushingly boring and repetitive. Losing them just might be a blessing.

Among these optimists are IT service company Cognizant. In a recent report (hat tip to Business Insider for the pointer), the consultancy notes that while creative destruction has always been with us, so has reinvention. Sure, robots will take jobs away, but they'll also create new ones.

What will these new gigs look like exactly? The report imagines detailed job ads for 21 future careers that Cognizant thinks may emerge in the next 10 years.

"To get into the coding and holiday spirit, TLDSB will be doing the #12blocksofcodemas this year! Each day, starting on December 7th, a new block of code for Scratch and ScratchJr will be announced on Twitter, Google+ and in the Staff Lounge in FirstClass. Students that participate can submit their projects to entered in a draw to win a prize for their school!"

John Evans's insight:

A Big THANKS to @ryan_psmith for sharing this great coding activity! Check out the great activities!

"Thanks to the successes of campaigns like the Hour of Code and this week’s Computer Science Education Week, educators, policymakers, and families around the country are realizing the value of coding and computer science in K-12 education. But how do “code,” “computer science,” and, “computational thinking,” fit together? What is motivating their introduction into schools, and how might they change education?

Our new report, Computational Thinking for a Computational World, draws from research and interviews with leaders around the country to answer the essential question: In a computational world, what is important to know and know how to do?

The report describes how computational thinking is both central to computer science and widely applicable throughout education and the workforce. It is a skillset for solving complex problems, a way to learn topics in many disciplines, and a necessity for fully participating in a computational world."

Music and dance teachers who are respected by female pupils should be trained to teach computer science to inspire more girls to pursue a career in the technology sector, educators have said.

More than 150 teachers and schoolgirls recently attended an event at Microsoft’s UK headquarters designed to show young women what life at a technology company was like.

Speaking just weeks after the Government used its Budget to announce significant funding to support the training of Computer Science teachers, Cindy Rose, the chief executive of Microsoft UK, kicked off this year’s DigiGirlz by highlighting the lack of women in the technology sector.

Educators told Microsoft at the event that school leaders needed to create more positive role models in computer science and give them modern classrooms to work in if the UK was to encourage more women to pursue a career in science, engineering, technology or maths (STEM).

Curious article from Microsoft. Convincing successful dancers and Musically talented women to covertly convert talent into computer and scienc geeks may not be a winning argument guys....This article shows the limits of the male mind to comprehend the mind and motivations of others. Now the STEAM or just STEM debate may be worth bringing up if Microsoft can show how developing programs and engineering for those creative fields opens creative doors and how creative thinking and skills open door for enginneeering teams?

I have had a couple of students at my school who love, or I should rather say who are obsessed, with Minecraft. My own kids actually love the game as well. As an adult, educator and parent naturally dismissed the game. I didn’t get what the fascination was with pixel blocks in an 8 bit format. Keep in mind that I am a gamer myself. A year and a half later, I am hooked. Whether you are playing the pocket edition or using the Minecraft EDU platform, there is so much to explore and create.

"A series of 6 classroom wall posters to promote the concept of computational thinking.

Alongside the 4 parts of computational thinking (Decomposition, Pattern Recognition, Abstraction and Algorithm design), I have also included debugging which includes common errors (example syntax and logical)."

"Welcome to the TVO TeachOntario Coding and Computational Thinking in the Classroom Hub.

We are excited to serve as the guest hosts for this hub, as we showcase coding and computational thinking ideas, research, activities and practices from educators around the province.

This hub is meant to serve as a collaborative place where we can all develop our understanding surrounding innovative practices related to coding and computational thinking. We also hope that it can serve as a responsive, ever-changing resource that meets the..."

Curiosity is a powerful catalyst for learning. Children want to understand the world around them, and naturally reveal their interests by asking questions – sometimes even too many questions! As educators, we may feel pressure to keep going with our intended lesson plan or to get to our ‘point.’

This may lead us, as teachers, to push ahead instead of listening to a child’s question, or to answer it briefly and move on. The goal of education should be to nurture and grow minds that are ready to solve problems and think critically, and asking questions is a necessary skill in that process.

For this reason, we want to prioritize question asking and place it at the forefront of our mission for our classrooms and our students.

Music Crab is simple and free iPad designed to help students learn to read music. The app features a little crab that students move by playing virtual piano keys in the app. To move the crab students have to play the correct notes. If they play too many incorrect notes in a row, the game is over and they have to start again.

In today’s’ technology-driven world, it’s important now more than ever to prepare students for the future. Teaching robotics to young students throughout their schooling can increase their ability to be creative and innovative thinkers and more productive members of society. Many governments have already recognized the importance of robotics in the classroom and have begun to create programs and laws that would incorporate it into their public education system. By teaching our students the basics of robotics, we can open a whole new world to them and exciting opportunities that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

In this project tutorial, we’re going to make light-up Christmas cards using copper tape, LEDs and a coin cell battery. This is a really fun STEM or makerspace project that you can do around the holidays.

Learn the basics of electricity and circuits while making custom holiday cards for your friends and family.

Like a lot of children, my sons, Toby, 7, and Anton, 4, are obsessed with robots. In the children’s books they devour at bedtime, happy, helpful robots pop up more often than even dragons or dinosaurs. The other day I asked Toby why children like robots so much.

“Because they work for you,” he said.

What I didn’t have the heart to tell him is, someday he might work for them — or, I fear, might not work at all, because of them.

It is not just Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking who are freaking out about the rise of invincible machines. Yes, robots have the potential to outsmart us and destroy the human race. But first, artificial intelligence could make countless professions obsolete by the time my sons reach their 20s.

We worked hard on this list. Though we’re still updating it (with more info, age recommendations, etc.), we tried to collect a wide variety of ‘widgets’ that teachers and parents might find useful when shopping for children. To that end, we’ve got everything from horticulture kits to video games to books to microscopes, engineering kits, and more.

If you’re still shopping for Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, or any other holiday or celebration that involves children, we hope this list is useful. We’ll update it regularly so that you can find value in it not just for the holidays, but anytime throughout the year.

Computer coding is essentially a language that computer uses. When we think about helping kids learn computer coding, we automatically think we need a computer first. But in fact, there are many ways to learn computer coding without a computer, as many thinking and coding approach can be learned in different activities off-screen. Today we share some off-screen activities that teach kids computer programming.

I’m on a bit of a mission! Everywhere I go, I ask this question, “How many of you allow your students to publish for a global audience?” The result…very few hands go up if any. The reality is this is a real-world skill and can be a very important and authentic learning experience for students of all ages. What’s holding you back?

"Welcome to the Coding in the Classroom: Beyond the Hour of Code course. Work your way through this course at your own pace and in whatever order you prefer. Begin with the question in the panel to right, with Get Started Here: About You."

Last week I shared National Geographic's excellent multimedia timeline of the Pacific Theater of WWII. National Geographic offers a similar timeline of the European Theater. While the title of the timeline is World War II in Europe, it does include include events that happened in Africa and some events in the United States. The timeline World War II in Europe includes pictures, text, video, and maps of events beginning with Hitler's first violation of the Treaty of Versailles through the end of the war in Europe.

Students who are blind rarely major in math or science, and Emily Schlenker understands why, from personal experience.

A pre-med major at Wichita State University, Schlenker was born without sight. But that hasn’t slowed down her fascination with organic chemistry. What has repeatedly snagged her ability to study it, however, has been when homework assignments include charts and graphs that her screen-reading software can’t process.

“If I went around to every single wheelchair ramp on campus and broke part of it, there would be an absolute riot,” she says. “The equivalent for me is going to a class and not being able to study the textbook. No sighted person would ever do organic chemistry with no homework—they wouldn’t stand for it—but I was supposed to do that, apparently.”

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